A tool has traditionally been created or formed from a substantially solid object. Particularly, the substantially solid object is burned, cut, or otherwise configured to form the tool. It should be appreciated, at the outset, that the term “tool” is meant to broadly refer to any object or tangible entity which is used to selectively create another tangible entity or item. Further, the term “tool”, as used in this description, should not be narrowly construed to refer to any particular type of tool, but should remain broadly defined.
While the foregoing traditional approach does allow a tool to be selectively created, it suffers from some drawbacks. By way of example and without limitation, the foregoing strategy requires a relatively large amount of time and effort and is relatively costly. Further, the created tool is not easily modified.
To overcome these and other drawbacks associated with this traditional tool building technique and strategy, an approach has been developed in which a soft design (e.g., a design based upon or created within software) of the tool is initially created. The soft design is then used to create various intangible or “soft” sections and these sections are respectively, typically, and sequentially manifested into respective physical sections which are sequentially coupled to build the tool. Such an approach is often referred to as a “lamination” approach and is described within U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,742 (“The '742 Patent”), which was issued on Jul. 1, 2003, which was assigned to Applicant's assignee, and which is fully and completely incorporated herein by reference, word for word and paragraph for paragraph.
While this “lamination” strategy does reliably produce a tool which overcomes the foregoing drawbacks of prior tool forming strategies, sometimes the produced tool fails to have a desired overall dimensional accuracy. That is, various spatial dimensions of the produced tool may not always be as close to the spatial dimensions of the softly designed tool as is desired, and such differences may arise from spatial variations associated with the structure and/or surface contours or the individual sectional members. That is, a produced sectional member may have surface features, contours, or other spatial dimensions which are not quite equal to or similar to the surface features, contours, and spatial dimensions of the corresponding “soft” or intangible sectional member. Such differences may arise from the technique used to produce the sectional member or just from seemingly minor surface or other structural imperfections associated with the physical sectional member. Accordingly, as the number of selectively coupled sectional members increases, these individual variations accumulate and may cause a rather undesirable overall variation between the actually produced physical tool and the corresponding “soft” design.
One approach to address this issue involves the measurement of the spatial dimensions of each produced sectional member and the use of these measurements, in feedback fashion, to “fix” or set the location within the “soft” design which specifies the characteristics of the next produced sectional member. This “feedback” approach is described with The '742 Patent.
While the foregoing approach does increase the overall dimensional accuracy of the produced tool, yet another approach to overcoming the foregoing difficulties may be utilized and this competing approach is described within this Application. Further, it should be appreciated that the following described approach may be used in combination with the “feedback” approach which is described with The '742 Patent to produce a tool having even greater overall dimensional accuracy.